


Switch Me On

by Castanea



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), mad max - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Politics, kink meme fill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-02 03:50:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4044796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Castanea/pseuds/Castanea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Citadel needs more hydroponics equipment. The leader of the Caliber clan has plenty, and she likes talking to pretty men. Furiosa convinces Max to strut his stuff as an ambassador. But first she has to convince him that he has stuff to strut. Take one for the team, dude.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scouting

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd. I'll fiddle with it in the morning. 
> 
> It helps if you listen to Goldfrapp's extended original edit of “Ooh La La” to getcha into the mood. My thanks to bonehandledknife, on tumblr, for taking a quick look at this, and all my love to the Mad Max Kink Meme.

They have a weak spot,” Toast offers. “Leverage, I mean.” 

Furiosa looks up. Toast sits in on every war council, all of the sisters do, but Toast has especial precedence at this one because this is her tribe they are dealing with. The one she was taken from. Immortan Joe stole the Caliber clan's women, stole all they had, but the survivors rebuilt, and after all this time, they've made a name and a life for themselves again.  
Now they've shown up at the Citadel. 

Toast's been talking with the cloaked scouts and the ambassadors, and the supply masters who camp in the shade of the Citadel's gates but don't quite dare come inside, despite the open invitation. They like Toast. It's hard not to. She eats up their stories and their jokes and comes back soon starving for more. Furiosa can hear her laughter ringing up the height of the stone walls during the long morning negotiations. She's asked Toast if she wants to go live with them, and Toast is silent a moment, gnaws her lips before saying, “No. No.”  
Toast brings down precious rations for them in the evenings. Shares with them around a campfire, and comes back with the desert stars reflected in her eyes.  
She loves them. She knows them now, has relearned their history and their faces. The Citadel needs that knowledge, but there's only so far Furiosa is willing to exploit it. 

It is understood that the Citadel troops will not intimidate them or fight them. Only trade. No more warmongering. There are no clan members left alive who remember Toast as a happy Caliber toddler, but they acknowledge her as theirs. That has made things easier.  
Not easy enough. 

This is still the Citadel of Immortan Joe. Under new leadership, but still, in some way, the same people who plundered them and spilled their blood.  
They want to trade. But nothing is settled, and they grow more wary with each day they spend staring up at the skull carved into the cliff face. 

What to say, Furiosa wonders. What to say to Toast offering up the tender belly of her clan. It is a monumental act of trust, and one Furiosa wishes were unnecessary, but there's too many people living in the Citadel now, and when Toast came back with stories of Caliber clan's hydroponics towers...  
This was always going to be difficult. 

Capable seems to sense Furiosa's discomfort. She smoothes her knuckles along Toast's arm in that easy way she has of touching people, and says, “You don't have to tell us. It's okay. We can find another way.” 

Can they? Furiosa wonders. She hates this, feels the bare, stone walls of the council room choking her. Sees the last of the Many Mothers, Jessa and Tamsin, casting significant looks at her over the cracked plastic table. They know Furiosa would never give over sensitive information on her tribe. She can't ask Toast to.  
Furiosa clears her throat, “Toast …,” she begins. 

“It's okay. I'm … ,” Toast sighs, “Don't worry. It's not that kind of information. Not defenses or supply shortages or anything sensitive.” 

And she surprises them all by smiling. It's a warm smile, touched with humor. Like she's thinking of one of the jokes the Caliber scouts whisper to her at night. 

“Just something that might, uh,” she pauses, “sweeten the deal.” 

The room quiets. Capable's knuckles still on Toast's shoulder, draw back. 

Capable asks, “Is it funny? I mean, you seem --” 

“Yeah, it's … it's pretty funny. I gotta admit.” 

“Out with it, girl!” Jessa demands, flapping both hands at her with a shooing motion. 

“Okay. It's. Well. I've told you about General Octavia, remember?” 

Caliber clan's leader since the great pillage. The women around the table nod. 

“So,” Toast continues, “Jamie and the other scouts told me she's got a thing for. Uh. Pretty men. Ambassador Serena confirms,” she adds, in the face of her companion's ringing silence, “Confirms emphatically. Always puts her in a good mood, apparently. Nothing weird, she just likes talking to them, getting them to butter her up....” 

Toast sinks back into silence, her smile going stale. She watches as every eye in the room focuses on the same spot, a place around the council table that's empty more often than not. But today there's a man sitting there, just visible under a canvas cloak and leather jacket. His beard has grown long enough to cover the lower half of his face, but his eyes are still clear, staring back. The other council members are waiting for him to say something. They're going to be waiting a long time, Furiosa thinks. 

“I mean,” Toast says, “That's who I was thinking, anyway.” 

When Jessa and Tamsin start chuckling, then snorting, and finally work their way up to shrieks of shrill, old lady laughter, complete with stomping and fists slammed on the table, Toast nudges Capable. Shrugs. 

“I told you it was funny.”


	2. Not Pretty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also unbeta'd. Quick and dirty. Will clean up later.

Once the laughter has died down, or at least been restrained, the council discusses the proposal thoroughly, and as seriously as they can under the circumstances. “Pretty men!” Jessa keeps crowing under her breath, until Furiosa sighs in her direction. Jessa stops. She gives Furiosa a dry look that says, 'Careful, girl. I've been going to council meetings since you were two hands high. I'm still a Mother.' 

'I know,' Furiosa wants to say. She hopes Jessa can tell that she respects her. It's just that.... 

Her mind wanders. So do her eyes. Someone has left the council chamber door open, and an afternoon wind has blown its way into the corner of the room, sweeping his cloak back, making him blink hard, so that Furiosa cannot tell if he is confused or simply dry-eyed. 

It's just that it's Max. 

The conversation continues around them, fades in and out of focus. 

“ – absolutely sure?”  
“Oh yeah, they knew what they were talking about.”  
“It's not going to be … gross, is it?”  
“No! No, Octavia's not like that, and I'll be there, I wouldn't let her!”  
“We don't even know if he --” 

Furiosa rises suddenly. Everyone stops talking at once. Max makes the only significant movement he's made since he sat down two hours ago, lifting his head to watch her. 

“We're going to go talk about this,” she says. Everyone in that room knows who 'we' is, she can tell. “We'll be back.” She nods to them all and strides out purposefully, absolutely sure Max will follow. Not bothering to look behind to see if she's right. The council start their arguments again as soon as she's out the door. Quieter this time. Soon the sound is lost in the drafty hallways. 

She climbs the worn, carved stairs, spiraling through the rock of the cliff, up to the women's quarters. In truth, they are the quarters for the women, plus Max, but this is not acknowledged. It just is.  
The quarters have been moved from the vault to the floor just below. Now the vault is full of pea plants, spreading out over the old memories of violence and pain, green tendrils covering the floor, the walls, at last reaching the highest painted message: Who Killed The World? The pea plants don't answer, but they make it clear who is trying to bring the world back to life. Their tendrils trail down over the stairwell, brushing Furiosa's head as she turns off the stairs and past the curtains, into the women's lounge. 

The milking mothers are having their lunch in a companionable huddle around a pot of beans. They wave to Furiosa, and to Max when he bobs into view behind her, a pea shoot curling around his ear. He spares a second to disentangle himself, then follows Furiosa into the room in the back left corner. 

Furiosa closes the door behind them. The quarters she's chosen for herself are small and spare; the only concession to comfort is the smattering of faded cushions she's placed from one end of the floor to the other. 

Only the wives know about her secret love of soft things. And Max, now. He's never asked her about it. He has his own nest of pillows at the foot of her bed, where he's been sleeping more often than not. He glances that way, asking her if they'll sit there to talk like they often do. When she makes no move in that direction, he leans against a wall and waits for her to begin. 

She wastes no time. “We need you for this.” 

That gets his attention. It always does. Which is why it surprises her when his response is a muttered,

“I don't think I can.” 

Well, there it is, then. Furiosa bites back her disappointment, schools her face so she's sure it doesn't show. “That's all right. We'll just --” 

Max shakes his head so fast, she's reminded of the way he'd shaken the dust-storm grit from his hair, sitting beside her in the war rig all those months ago. He opens and closes his mouth on half-words – he's always like this when he first wanders back from the desert – until he manages, 

“Can't. I'll. Do it, but I'm not ...” 

He gestures at his face, and then his whole self, with an upturned palm creased with engine oil. A meaningful expression, helpless. Understanding knifes through her. That last word, 'not', hangs in the air. 

Not … pretty. 

“You,” Furiosa starts to say, but she stops herself because she didn't like where that sentence was going. In fact, she doesn't like any of the possible routes this conversation will follow. Everything she thinks of saying sounds ridiculous. So instead of talking, she considers. If there's anyone who will accept an uncomfortable moment of silence, it's Max.  
It's only rarely that she lets her eyes rest on him for any length of time. He's nervous under scrutiny. She can feel the tension in him, the hard-wired scream of his adrenaline to go, go, go. But he holds still for her. Long enough for her to take stock. Furiosa sees: 

Matted hair, crusted with sweat and dirt, and a sprawling beard that's no neater. Together, they hide his face.  
The ragged ends of his cloak brown and fraying. It was new when she packed it away in the back of his car three weeks ago, wondering if he'd ever wear the gift (Of course he had. He was too practical not to, and Furiosa was foolish to doubt).  
The rest of him … too dirty to show the scars on his skin. A straight back offset by hunched shoulders and a wary slant of the neck, the posture of someone ready to take a hit and come up swinging. 

He looks feral again, after his last three weeks away, like she imagines he was when he was first captured and brought to the Citadel. Pretty? No. But with a bit of water and a pair of scissors, well, she remembers … A clean jawline. Blue eyes. Those are still there, half-visible under his mess of hair. His lips are completely covered except when he's speaking. Which is to say, never. She knows they were wide lips, entirely out of place in the parched desert, the bottom as full as the top. Pale at first with a coating of sand but flushed underneath from his perpetual adrenaline high. They stick in the memory. 

It depends, she supposes, on what General Octavia likes. In any case, there's no doubting that Max is the safest bet they have. There is no Wretched man who's gained enough flesh back yet to match him, and the Boys, even the healthiest, are too sick for an extended diplomatic mission. 

“You don't have to,” she tells him finally, her words too loud in the cushioned space of the room, “For what it's worth, I think you can. I'd like you to try.” 

He says nothing. Just nods, a gesture of his that's grown deeper every time he's returned to her. She half wonders if someday it will morph into a full-on bow. She doesn't know what she'll do if that happens. 

Furiosa does not tell him, “It might be dangerous.” That would be as useful to say as , “It might be dusty.” She does not tell him, “I will have your back,” because she hopes he knows (It is something she has wanted to talk about, but she finds an excuse not to, every time). 

Furiosa does say, “I'll be with you.” 

He nods again, a centimeter lower. He knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to bonehandledknife for looking this over briefly, and thanks to everyone who gave kudos and left comments! This is my first foray into posted fanfiction in a long time, and it's good to come back to such kindness and enthusiasm! Working on chapter three right now. 
> 
> NEXT TIME: Max gets cleaned and primped. You knew this was coming.


	3. Tailored

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd. Sorry this took so long -- job interviews suck the life from me. It's twice as long as the last installment, at least. Whoo!

When they draw near the doors of the council chamber, Max lingers at the other side of the hallway. He makes no move to follow her through. Furiosa understands. He doesn't like sitting on the council under the best circumstances, and will need some time to gather himself. She lets him have that time.  
“I'll be back soon.”  
He produces a revolver from his cloak, straightens into a look-out's pose. Furiosa heads inside.  
The other council members have stopped for a lunch break, passing around bowls of beans and fresh green peas, sharing sips of water from the same dented aluminum jug. Capable offers a bowl to Furiosa, but she shakes her head, “No, thanks.” 

She asks, “Toast. Could you get your clan to agree to a visit from our delegates, speaking with General Octavia personally?” 

“Probably … ” Toast says, intrigued and beginning to hope. Furiosa nods a confirmation. 

“He's agreed.” 

Muttering all around. Toast speaks over the noise, “There's a party going back to the home camp tomorrow. We could see about heading out with them.”

“Good,” Furiosa says, though privately she would have liked more time to prepare. 

“That means we will have to put everything in order tonight,” Capable reasons, “and get Max ready...” 

“Yes.” 

Practicalities are discussed, the tailor is summoned and sent away with orders, and Capable rushes off to fiddle with the recently installed showers. One's been outfitted with a heater. It will be needed for loosening weeks of desert grime from Max's skin. She soon returns to confirm that it's running good and hot, and the council sets off for the central atrium. Max joins them in the hallway. He pockets his revolver, falling into step beside Furiosa.  
“Plan?” he asks her.  
“We're going to see about getting you a trim and a shave. A shower's in the works. The new heated one.”  
His eyebrows rise, briefly. She thinks. They reach the atrium, and Capable's there with a tool bench laid out, scrap towels, a bowl of ash soap and water, a razor, and scissors. The afternoon sun slices through the skylight and bounces off the limestone, illuminates the room brighter than a dozen generators could manage.  
Jessa drags a chair over, offers it to Max. He sits hunched, trying not to jerk himself away from the silvery noise of the scissors biting his hair away piece by piece. Soon there is a sandy-blonde ring around the chair. Furiosa glares levelly at a passing War Boy (just a Boy now, and that's enough) who looks like he's getting ideas about scooping it into a bag. He flees without a peep. 

“There y'are,” Jessa says, once she's gotten things even. She brushes stray hairs from his ears, which seem much more prominent after the cut. “Time for a shave.” 

The Boys are experts in smooth shaving, but Max won't even hear about letting them near him with the cut-throat razor. He looks leery-eyed at Jessa wielding it, and even at Capable with her gentle hands. Furiosa sees the panic boiling up his spine.  
“I'll do it,” she says, and the fight goes out of him. 

Soon, her fingers are spreading the ash soap and warm water across his chin, a bowl held underneath to catch the run-off. The knife is sharp (she'd sharpened it herself as Max looked on); it glides over his skin with the shallowest whisper of resistance. Max does not move.  
'Don't breathe,' she told him once, her gun resting on his shoulder. He's not breathing now. The blade skims his Adam's apple and pivots to scrape the last patch of stubble from the skin over his jugular.  
She could kill him with a press of the wrist. The thought makes her step back, the knife comes away, and she sees his clean face for the first time in over three years. Hears the rush of breath as he allows himself to exhale. 

She is glad he doesn't ask her how he looks, because she would not be able to say. Toast passes him a rear-view mirror. He examines himself, his fingers following the path of the razor. Furiosa wonders if it startles him too, the long-absent face looking back at him. 

Capable gathers the towels and soap and heads off to set the shower – the temperature control is shaky, at best, and needs careful adjustment to avoid scalding. Furiosa catches Max's eye before he heads off.

“I can tune that for you.” She gestures to his leg brace. “While you're getting cleaned up.” He pauses, unclips it, leaves it for her. Then Toast, Tamsin, and Jessa whisk him off. 

“Don't worry, son, we'll show you how the new showers work,” Jessa says, “We'll make sure you wash behind your ears.” Max grunts a dark grunt that means he knows how the showers work too, and resents insinuation to the contrary. Furiosa has gotten better at deciphering his grunts. He talks more now than he ever has, but some weeks he'll trail back to the Citadel tongue-tied and sun-blinded, sand in his mouth, in need of a rest and a couple days spent near other people before he's coherent again. When that happens, Furiosa likes to retreat to the garage with him and work on the cars. They re-wired a bashed-up Mustang together three months ago, not a word between them.  
The sounds coming from Max now are – she listens – supreme skepticism, resignation. The bathing block is only meters away, on the other side of a single wall, and Furiosa can hear the thud of cloth dropped to the floor. The hiss of the shower turning on, shifting tone as a body steps into its flow. 

She narrows her focus until the world shrinks down to the brace on the tool table and the screwdriver in her hand. The movements of the tune-up are soothing and familiar. She unscrews each piece. Sets them in order, smooths away grit, oils the leather and the friction points of the metal. Suture the tailor passes through at one point, a measure of blue cloth in his hands. A men's shirt. He wants her approval, but she waves him away for Jessa and Tamsin to deal with. Of course, her concentration is broken again when Jessa sweeps through to the tool table, groping around for her bone needle. “I don't know what that tailor was thinking. Hemmed before he measured, doesn't fit properly at all, he's not designing for Lord Nipple-and-Chain anymore. Hope he's left the margin untrimmed, I really do.”  
Furiosa makes a noncommittal noise. Jessa 'a-ha's, holding up the recovered needle, and returns to the shower block. 

When Furiosa is next interrupted, she has at least finished the bulk of the tuning. She looks up from her work to see Cheedo, Dag, and Dag's daughter, the chubby-cheeked Zinnia, descending the stairs from the women's quarters. Zinnia has taken her first steps, but is far from managing stairs so Dag has her tucked into the hollow of her hip. Cheedo carries a wood-handled brush – her own, Furiosa notices. They were at the council earlier, but left to attend to Zinnia before the course of diplomacy began its swerve down this strange route. 

Dag is the first to speak.  
“Heard the news. Is Max ready for the ball?”  
The joke is for Cheedo, who's memorized the book pile's half-copy of Sense and Sensibility. Cheedo either misses the irony or chooses to ignore it, asking, “Do you think there could be a ball?”  
Furiosa gut reaction is to say no, of course not – and then she realizes that she doesn't know. Certainly not like in Jane Austen's book. As a child she danced with the Many Mothers, a shuffle and swing to clapped hands, steps her body remembers still but will never dance again.  
Dag notices the distance in her eyes (Dag seems to notice everything), and answers for her.  
“Probably not, Cheedo. But we live in hope. You need any extra help, Furiosa?”  
Furiosa gives the leg brace a final twist with the screwdriver and hands it to her. “For him. They're in the shower block. Don't know if he's got his trousers on yet.”  
Dag nods a thanks for the warning – she's still uncomfortable around naked men, and might always be. 

Then Furiosa waits. It's harder to ignore the sounds coming from the shower when she has nothing to occupy herself with. The stirring of more fabric, feet smacking on a wet floor, Cheedo saying, “Please? I think it will help.” 

When Max emerges with the councilwomen trailing behind him, he's just doing up the last button of his shirt. 'It has buttons,' Furiosa thinks, dimly, 'A decadence. We'll look impressive.' 

The shirt is blue like his suddenly visible eyes, like the Mothers say the sky used to be, and the plastic buttons aren't the only decadence on display. It has a collar, ironed sharply, and cuffs at both wrists. He is stream-lined. Jessa's tailoring follows the curve of his waist, someone has found him tight leather biker boots that go all the way up to the bottoms of his kneecaps. Cheedo must have used her prized brush on his newly cut hair because it lies miraculously flat and miraculously clean, finer under the dirt than Furiosa would have guessed.  
The effect of all of it, as a whole, is strange to her. A hyper-correction, cleaner than the version of him she saw first, and miles from the desert-marked Max she's grown used to. 

“Everything feeling okay?” Capable asks him. He shrugs, one-shouldered. 

“He looks good, right?” Toast says. 

The general agreement is yes, he does. Max shuffles under their scrutiny. Furiosa can see that he's trying to find an angle on the situation, somewhere between the impulses to fight or to flee. He settles on posing in what she thinks of as 'parade rest', upright, his feet a shoulder's width apart, one hand secured around the other at the small of his back. It's so similar to the look-out's pose that she finds herself expecting him to pull a revolver from his neatly hemmed trousers. 

Now that the shock of his appearance is ebbing, the others are starting to come around to the question of his behavior. 

Dag cocks her head, “Are we sure he can butter up the general? Can you _butter_?” 

Capable prompts him, all business, “Do you have any idea of the sorts of things women like?” 

“What do you think a woman would like from him, Furiosa?” Toast asks with exaggerated innocence. Furiosa's mouth goes dry with something less than anger, and more than annoyance. She knows the way she is expected to respond, that she should brush it off for the teasing it is, a joke they've made at her expense before. It's just not one they've made in front of Max. Definitely not while he's standing across from her, scrubbed up and tailored, his hands clasped expectantly behind him like he's waiting for her orders.  
“It's enough if he's polite,” Jessa says, “That's rare enough in men.” 

This seems to prompt something, to change the quality in the air. Max's weight shifts with the promise of movement. They all watch as he steps forward, a determined set to his jaw. With most of his hair gone, his eyes are almost too bright. They look into Furiosa's. 

Max stops an arm's distance from her. He makes a decision. 

The motion is smooth as he lowers himself – it should be, she oiled the hell out of that leg brace. 

He kneels. 

One shin flat against the floor, the other at a crisp right angle. Left arm resting on the knee. A soft 'clink' as the brace settles. He offers a hand to her, and Furiosa extends her own in return. She knows then what he is going to do. There is an inevitability to it; the scene unfolds and she feels that she's observing outside herself from a distance. That all of this has been a long time coming. 

Max moves her hand a measure closer to himself, close enough to his chest that she can feel the phantom heat of the shower clinging to his skin. He drops his head into the familiar nod, and his back curves with it in a reverential arch over her fingertips. 

No one speaks. 

“... That'll do it,” Tamsin breathes, eventually. 

“Octavia's gonna cream herself,” Dag murmurs to the world in general. Her daughter, with the unerring instinct of a toddler, says, perfectly and clearly, “Cream.”  
It breaks the spell. The women turn their attention to the little girl. Dag gasps, bounces her on her hip, “Your fifth word! Good girl! But, uh, maybe,” she says, the realization hitting her, “maybe find another word, darling, for now.” 

Max still holds Furiosa's hand. She wouldn't have felt the tic tremors if she wasn't expecting them. He notices her noticing and releases her with a final dip of the chin. Then he stands and is back to being Max, wary and tucked in on himself, antsy from the strain of his performance. It's a relief to her, honestly. 

Her expression asks if he's all right. His return expression is indecipherable, but only because he wants it to be. With his face so visible he is dangerously easy for her to read. She's certain he knows it. Is uncomfortably aware of it. 

Furiosa turns her attention to the other women, taking note of their approval. Cheedo, beaming and beaming, twisting the ends of her hair in excitement. Capable, more subdued but still warm, the cupid's bow of her mouth quirked at a job well done. Jessa and Tamsin have recovered from their earlier awe. They look ready to start cackling again. Toast grins. 

It's a start. 

A group of milking mothers have gathered in the back of the atrium to see what the fuss is about. Their whispers float up to the high ceiling. Some of the noise must sink to the levels below, because it only takes the passage of a moment before cadres of Boys are poking their shaven heads up the stairwell to get a peek. And quickly as that, the atrium has lost any semblance of privacy, and Furiosa gestures a retreat to the council chamber. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- Suture the tailor used to work for the People Eater, and was lent out to Immortan Joe to design and repair his entourage's clothing. He's a strange man.  
> \-- I loved the idea of Dag naming her daughter Angharad, but felt that she might name her something else if the shock of Angharad's death was still too raw. So here, she named her daughter after the first flower she got to bloom in the Citadel.


End file.
